The New NPR/Marist Survey of Demographic Divides: How Democrats Are Predicting the 2020 Presidential Election and Where Do They Stand?

According to the latest NPR/Marist poll, Democrats are starting to rally around President Biden with just over a month left before the election.

Biden had also been suffering from an intensity problem. Only 9% of people said they were very pleased with the job he was doing. That’s double in this poll — 24%.

Inflation is the top issue for voters going into the final days of voting with 36% saying so, followed by preserving democracy 25%, health care 8%, immigration 4%, and crime 3%.

The demographic divides the poll reveals ahead of this election suggest that core Democratic groups such as younger voters, Black and Latino voters, and even to some degree women, are expressing less support for Democratic candidates than they have in recent past elections. A CNN Poll among registered voters in early October 2018 found that 59% of women backed Democratic candidates in their district; now, 53% do. Sixty percent of voters of color support Democrats, compared to 39% who back Democrats now. Latino voters break 52% for the Democrats, 23% for the Republican and 21% say they support neither candidate. Black voters were split between the Democrat and the Republican. Democrats held a 15-point advantage in the age range of 45 to 54 years old, compared with 8 points for the other party. Likely voters in each of these groups currently tilt a bit more Democratic than registered voters, but motivation to vote among younger voters and voters of color is markedly lower than among older voters or White voters.

The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that Democratic base voters’ levels of enthusiasm are low compared to their Republican counterparts. Voting ends on Tuesday and it is the last NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey.

Whatever the results, the groundwork is already being laid for outcomes to be contested. The current candidates mimicking the former president’s style have been able to spread his false claims that the 2020 presidential election will be stolen. That is false. President Biden won, and that’s been proven repeatedly in and out of court.

Republican preferred candidates are less likely to say that they should concede if they are declared the loser. Almost twothirds of Democrats said so.

A president’s approval rating is an important indicator of how a party will do in congressional elections. Democratic strategists were worried that their candidate would over perform their president’s numbers.

In July, 22% of independents approved. But since then, there’s been something of a thaw — 39% approve, fewer are disapproving and more independents have moved into the undecided category.

Biden has seen some victories recently, including the signing of the inflation reduction act. Gas prices are lower than they have been in the past.

How Do We Want to Vote? A Survey of the U.S. Post-Pandemic Demographics and a Comparative Analysis

How people will vote is also very different. The voting procedures were changed by the Pandemic. A plurality of Democrats say they will vote by mail this November, but the overwhelming majority of Republicans say they’ll still cast theirs in person. Most of the independents said they would vote in person.

College-educated white woman and men were the group most likely to say so, as well as men who live in small cities or the suburbs.

When asked about their interest in the election on a 1-to-5 scale, with 1 being very interested and 5 not interested at all, about 7 in 10 described themselves as very interested.

Republicans are slightly more interested in Democrats. The groups mostly likely to say they were very interested were white college graduates, especially men, and older voters.

The least likely to say so were younger voters, people making less than $50,000 a year; Black voters; parents with children under 18; those who haven’t graduated college, especially white women without degrees; and those who live in small towns.

That’s because competitive races are taking place in areas that are more conservative than the country as a whole, how districts are drawn and how densely concentrated Democrats are in cities.

When Republicans picked up 13 seats, the polls showed they had a 2-point advantage on the question. In 2010, when they gained a massive 63 seats, they had a 9-point advantage.

The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll had a deeper look at which issues were important to voters. Republicans are using crime more in their ads in key states like Wisconsin. Last month, it ranked sixth overall, though it was creeping up with Republicans in particular.)

The latest snapshot of this divergence was offered last week by the national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll. Asked what issue they considered most important in 2022, Republicans overwhelmingly chose inflation (52%) and immigration (18%). A comparable share of Democrats picked preserving democracy (32%), abortion (21%) and health care (15%). Independents split exactly in half between the priorities of the two parties: inflation and immigration on the one side, and democracy, abortion and health care on the other. Voters with four-year college degrees leaned more towards democracy and abortion, while those without degrees were more likely to worry about inflation. (This survey did not include crime as an option, but it too has usually provoked the most concern from Republicans and non-college educated voters.)

More than 75% of Americans have faith in their local and state governments to conduct a fair and accurate election. Republicans were less likely to say so, but still almost two-thirds of them said they do have that confidence despite extreme rhetoric coming from candidates and people like Trump.

But there was a significant gap on this between Democrats and Republicans — 92% of Democrats said they had confidence, while 69% of Republicans said they did. Three-quarters of independents did the same.

Despite their lagging confidence in elections, Republicans were, however, the most likely to say they always display an American flag on their property — almost 6 in 10 said so as compared to 22% of Democrats and 27% of independents. A majority of the Democrats say they never do.

The CNN Poll: Why is President Biden’s 2016 election super weird? The push and pull between populism priorities during general election debates

The right-wing populisms around the world, like Trump, use white grievance and nationalism as the fuel for their political power, something that will be a key part of a Trump candidacy, if he ever chooses to run.

The new CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS on September 3 through October 5 among a random national sample of 1,982 adults initially reached by mail, including 1,577 registered voters and 1,198 likely voters. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points and it is 3.5 points for registered voters and 4.0 points for likely voters. The survey includes an oversample of adults living in 50 competitive congressional districts, with districts chosen based on publicly available race ratings at the time the sample was chosen. The 484 likely voters have an error margin of 5.1 points, while 540 registered voters have a plus or minus 5.4 point error margin. The weighted subset was meant to include the proper percentage of the entire adult population of the United States.

But another critical factor is that many of the voter groups that Democrats most rely upon are relatively less focused on the issues where public concerns about Biden’s performance are greatest, and more focused on issues where anxieties are greatest about the intentions of Republicans. Ayres said that the blue team cared about abortion and democracy while the red team cared about crime and immigration. There is a lot of overlap on the inflation front. We have become so split that the two teams are motivated by the same things.

Retaining democracy and abortion are key factors as former President Trump has weighed in heavily on these elections. He has endorsed a number of candidates, many of whom were also his successors, and perpetuated his election lies.

“In large part that’s why this election is super weird,” says Bryan Bennett, lead pollster for Navigator, a Democratic polling consortium. “People are having to make this trade-off between the immediate economic concerns [where]…they might blame the incumbent party in power. At the same time, they know that the same party in power is going to protect the right to abortion.

The push and pull between competing priorities have been clearly displayed over the past week during the first series of general election Senate debates in some states. During last week’s televised Arizona encounter, for instance, Republican challenger Blake Masters came out of the gate very strong and kept Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on the defensive by relentlessly linking him to Biden while the conversation initially focused on inflation and border security. As the discussion shifted to abortion and election integrity, Kelly immediately regained the ascendancy, as Masters struggled to explain his support for a near total ban on abortion and his embrace of Trump’s baseless claims.

The sheer intractability of our political divisions makes voters less willing to shift loyalties if they are unhappy with current conditions. Particularly in Senate races, including the contests in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, Republicans have also been hurt by nominating Trump-aligned candidates that many voters view as unqualified, extreme or both.

Democrats are emphasizing issues relating to rights and values, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement because of the disparity. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.

Counting Biden’s Sea of Miscontent: Implications for the Economic Inflation Reduction Act, the Manufacturing Boom, and the Reionization of the United States

In the long run, the most important of these may be the argument that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the trio of central Biden legislative accomplishments – the bills to rebuild infrastructure, promote semiconductor manufacturing and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy – will produce a boom in US employment, particularly in manufacturing jobs that don’t require a college degree.

Only a few Democrats are emphasizing those plant openings, and most of them are from Michigan, Arizona, and Ohio.

More commonly, Democrats are stressing legislation the party has passed that offers families some relief on specific costs, especially the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. According to Garin, highlighting certain initiatives can allow candidates to overcome their negative judgement on Biden’s economic management. He is concerned that too many Democrats are only focused on abortion and not on the economy.

The Democrats want to build a sea wall against the swelling currents of economic discontent, by arguing that the manufacturing boom and cost-saving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act will help struggling families. But the campaign’s final weeks will measure whether that current reaches a level that breaches all of the party’s defenses.

Overall, voters nationwide split over whether Republicans’ policies would move the country in the right direction or the wrong one should they win control of Congress (51% say the right direction among registered voters compared to the 48% who say the wrong direction), but the GOP has a wider advantage in competitive districts (54% say the GOP would take the country in the right direction if they won control vs. 45% who say they would go in the wrong direction). About the same number of voters in both competitive and non-competitive districts say they feel strongly about the effect of a GOP victory.

Republican registered voters nationwide and in competitive congressional districts are a bit more likely to say they are deeply motivated to vote than are Democratic registered voters (52% extremely motivated among Republicans nationally, 46% among Democrats; in competitive districts, it’s 55% among Republicans vs. 45% among Democrats).

Down-ballot Democrats received fewer votes than up-ballot candidates in their own party 93.08% of the time. Down-ballot roll-off was less severe for down-ballot Republican state legislative candidates, who received fewer votes than up-ballot candidates 75.47% of the time. While both parties suffered from down-ballot roll-off, Democrats experienced it more often.

Former President Donald Trump – though also not a factor for about half of voters (50%) – prompts a more even partisan reaction, and may work in Democrats’ favor in the competitive districts. All told, 28% of voters nationwide say they are voting to send a message of opposition to Trump while 20% say they’ll be sending a message of support. In competitive districts, 54% of Democrats say their vote will be to express opposition to the former President while 47% of Republicans say they’ll be voting to express support.

When they break, elections usually go in one direction. The political indicators on my dashboard are blinking red in favor of Republicans.

Why should the United States be different? Comment on John Halpin in The New York Times/Siena Poll, Nate Cohn, and Julian Zelizer

John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote recently in his newsletter that inflation was a political problem for incumbent governments around the world. Why should the United States be different?

The latest New York Times/Siena poll, my colleague Nate Cohn wrote this week, suggests that “the conditions that helped Democrats gain over the summer no longer seem to be in place,” with voters’ sour view of the economy driving the downturn in the party’s prospects.

Democrats had a golden summer. The Dobbs decision led to a surge of voter registrations. Voters gave the Democrats victories in Alaska and Kansas, along with good news in upstate New York.

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” The person has a verified account on the social media site, @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

What will the midterms tell us about the birth of the Tea Party? Observational insights on denialism and the new freedom caucus

Republicans are feeling much better about the midterms. After a summer when it seemed as if the Democrats might defy the historic trend of the president’s party doing poorly in these elections, the polls are looking up for the GOP.

The implications were enormous if the GOP had a strong showing. Not only could Republican success potentially shift control of the House and Senate, leaving President Joe Biden to deal with two years of trying to raise debt limits and avoid draconian budget cuts, but the midterms could entrench Trumpism and solidify the direction of the party.

The Washington Post reports on a group of Republicans who don’t believe that Biden won the election in 2020. Many of these candidates may lose, but there is a good chance that some of them will win and go on to win the reelection of Donald Trump in four years.

The midterms could turn supporters of election denialism into the new Freedom Caucus – the Tea Party Republicans who came to Washington after the 2010 midterms and organized into a powerful faction in the House GOP within a few years. They could be a driving force in a new majority that pushes anti-democratic policies to the very top of the Republican agenda.

Sixty five percent of Americans will have an election that is not in their favor, according to FiveThirtyEight. Among the deniers are some hoping to be secretaries of state, which – if victorious – would allow them to run state elections in coming years.

Undergoing the same sort of transformation that her predecessor Rep. Newt Gingrich experienced in the 1980s, Draper shows how Greene has turned into a party leader. He thinks she will be in a position of power if the Republicans win. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who was once dubbed a political terrorist by John Speaker, would be a power broker in the lower chamber.

In other words, Republican success in the 2022 midterms will cement that Trumpism wasn’t some sort of aberration – it is the norm. Liz Cheney is no longer in congress.

The 1978 election was a crucial moment in the direction of the conservatives. Moderate Republicans like Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker changed their approach to issues as they read the way the political winds were blowing. Baker decided against signing the SALT II Treaty with the soviet Union, as hardliners wrestled control of the GOP.

Republicans gained six gubernatorial seats, an area where the Republican National Committee had heavily invested. Republicans celebrated securing control of 12 state legislative chambers, up from four. Bill Brock commented on the change in Time magazine.

The numbers were not as important as the substance inside. Gingrich of Georgia was one of several Republicans who championed a new generation of conservative who rejected the older generation of party leaders who believed in sticking to the center.

Republicans won seats that the Democrats had held for decades. James Eastland was one of the most famous opponents of the civil rights movement. In Iowa, Democratic Sen. Dick Clark fell to defeat to abortion opponent Sen. Roger Jepsen, who attacked his opponent as “the senator from Africa” for Clark’s work fighting apartheid. These Republicans emphasized themes such as tax reductions and a stronger stance against communism.

There were new conservative political organizations that flexed their muscle. One of the most important forces of The New Right was the National Conservative Political Action Committee, formed in 1975, which helped to oust several prominent Democrats. Gordon Humphrey, a Republican opponent of abortion, defeated Thomas McIntyre, a democrat, in the New Hampshire Senate race.

Newsweek reported that after fifty years of the New Deal, America swung rightward toward Republicanism last week. The real message of the election returns was the ratification of a new and no longer partisan agenda for the nation – a consensus on inflation as the priority target and tax-and-spend government as the primary villain.”

Some are still wondering if there’s going to be long-term change in the Republican party. Even though it’s not possible to answer, the hold of election denialism on many Republican candidates and the rightward shift on policies like immigration is an indication of where things are.

The ex president’s anti-democratic theme was a part of his effort to overturn a presidential election. He was unsuccessful in doing so, but his strategy lives on.

Republicans are going to have to explain to voters why they don’t have a lot of room at the table with conservatives such as Cheney. If they win in November, there will be no turning back from the new royalty of the party of Trump.

Democracy’s Elections Down-Ballot Goldstein Roma: The Case of a Small Role of Ballot Overage in 2020 Democratic Primary Elections

Editor’s Note: Gaby Goldstein is the co-founder of Sister District, a nonprofit group whose mission is to build progressive power in state legislatures. The director of research at Sister District is a social psychologist named Mallory Roman. Their views are not reflected in this commentary. There is more opinion on CNN.

The Democrats won’t be able to turn up the votes heading into the polls. Democrats should tackle state legislative ballot roll-off head-on.

Interestingly, both parties sometimes experience what we are calling an “overage.” In this instance the down-ballot candidates got more votes than their up-ballot party mates. Republicans again were more likely to experience this down-ballot advantage than Democrats (78% to 22% in the instances where we saw this happen).

But the partisan trend only intensified. As expected, instances of roll-off decreased in contested races. It was lower for Republicans than it was for Democrats.

The real-world consequence of our findings can be seen in the 2020 election results. The Minnesota Senate is up for grabs. Joe Biden received more votes than Donald Trump, but Republicans still hold the state Senate majority. Ballot roll-off may have contributed to the results.

Minnesota state Senate Democrats in contested races received 110,297 fewer votes than Biden statewide, and state Senate Republicans in contested races received over 42,000 more votes than Trump. The voters who voted for president in the districts did not cast a vote for the state Senate. A majority of them did not cast their vote for the two Minnesota Senate seats.

Democrats lost those two districts and failed to take the Senate majority by less than 2,000 votes. All the difference can be made by small margins of roll off.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/democrats-elections-down-ballot-goldstein-roman/index.html

What Happened to the GOP Get Out The Vote? An Analysis of Turning Point Action, a Political Science Network, and the 2016 Arizona Dem Dem Demographic Survey

It means investment in civic education, year-round organizing and narrative-building in order to build progressive state and local political power, and better outcomes for everyone.

In the short term, Democrats must make the urgent, existential case that state legislatures are critical to the future of our civil rights and democracy.

Democrats in particular are puzzling over the decision Republicans made during the pandemic to demonize mail-in and early voting, after years of dominating the practice in states like Arizona and Florida. In some states, the Republican Party has quietly sent out postcards or digital ads to encourage early voting, but less well-known GOP politicians don’t want to amplify those appeals just because Donald Trump is in the White House.

Conservatives, like Turning Point Action, have been able to rally voters. The group, which is run by the pro- Trump activist, will be holding a get out the vote event on Saturday in Phoenix.

“When you’ve convinced your base that it’s a fraudulent method of voting, you have very little room to change their minds this late in the game,” said Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. There are so many reasons why things can go wrong on Election Day.

Get-out-the-vote operations became objects of media fascination after Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, which capitalized on new ways of organizing volunteers, sophisticated social-science techniques and innovative social media strategy to run circles around John McCain’s more traditional operation.

It was thought that Democrats had a lead over Republicans in the art and science of campaigns, but Hillary Clinton’s upset victory in the presidential election of 2016 changed things for the worse. Fieldwork doesn’t have the same cachet since.

David Nickerson, a political scientist who studied the Obama campaign and the turnout, said he hoped that Republicans were as good as Democrats.

With just a few days to go, this election is combining to make for uncertainty andunpredictability. The party in power is one of the topics that will be addressed in this year’s elections. That is largely the case with Biden’s approval rating slipping again, Democrats losing ground on which party voters want to control Congress and inflation being the top issue — with voters saying they trust Republicans more on the issue by 20 points.

If that candidate thinks the 2020 election was stolen, Republicans will vote for them, even though they agree on most issues.

A majority of Republicans (53%) said they would “very likely” vote for someone who thought (incorrectly) that the election was stolen, as compared to one-in-five Democrats and a third of independents.

Now by a 53%-to-38% margin, they say it’s better for the government to be controlled by the same party. Democrats who are threatening their majority this year are driving that with over 75% saying so, but less than 50% of independents and more than half of Republicans feel that way.